A Progressive Challenge-A different kind of challenge- all levels

Amazing! Two days to go!! Can't wait for that exciting update.

 

Only 5 to go. You can make it!! Hey, Rathi, have you learned anything that would help others?

 

Very nice.

 

Well, believe it! But...don't let your guard down..,

 

Okay, your draggy is normal but it sucks. I know. You've been at 3 days before so you know best how your body will react. You are doing well.

 

Why your willpower isn't enough - biology is attacking you
Getting to one week and beyond

Guys, despite a few short relapses on the thread, every single one of you continues to try hard. You keep getting stronger each time. Like when you play a video game and keep getting killed by the game, you come back for another round with new knowledge about what's going to happen here or there in the game. You know how it works. Eventually, you learn enough to beat the boss.

Well in the game of nofap, your PMO addiction is the boss and your own body and brain is his castle. Some of you are informed and some of you still think you can do this with willpower alone. That probably can happen with a rare individual but everyone else needs knowledge and science to beat the boss. Prayer and meditation are good weapons to carry in because they up your health points.

But to make it to the boss level, you have to get through the gate of Week 1, through the booby traps of weeks 2 and 3, and gather lots of hit points and potions in order to ascend to 90 day boss level.

Let's do a walkthrough to get through The Gate of 10 Days. First, you have a porn addiction, which is directly related and intertwined with your masturbation addiction. Can someone have a masturbation addiction without a porn addiction? Sure. I did at age 13. Porn wasn't available to me then.However, it is VERY unlikely you will have a porn addiction without a masturbation addiction unless you suffer from porn-induced ED. So level 1, admit addiction. Advance to level 2.

What is the biology of the addiction? Well, you didn't get here overnight. Here's what happened. When you experience something like a nice moment in music, or a girl's smile or a thrilling roller coaster, your brain produces a very teeny tiny amount of the neurochemical called dopamine. Just one hit and very small because under normal circumstances, that's enough to give you incredible pleasure. Nice!

The first time you saw a naked girl on your computer or phone, bam! You got a dopamine hit. Your brain and your body loved it because they are both full of special receptors specifically shaped to catch dopamine strands called ligands. Maybe you got your rocks off right then. Hey, free pleasure! After a time, though you look at multiple images. At first, you get a dopamine hit after every single one. Now you're already exceeding the natural dose. Then those pics become boring and you're not keeping your willy hard. So you start watching videos or looking for newer, more exotic or extreme pics. Yay, more dopamine that you crave and you are getting 100 or 500 times more than you actually need. Then you orgasm and almost immediately as you do cleanup on aisle one, your cravings are gone.
After a time though, your brain loves all that free dopamine but a bad thing has happened. Your dopamine receptors are so overused that a lot of them go dormant and become resistant to the dopamine. The guy then has to find ever more exciting or new or extreme stuff including orgies, weird fetishes and even gay porn just to get off. But even before this level, the frequent orgasms are not very good, except rarely. Mostly, they're short and intense but not much in the way of pleasure. Because many dopamine receptors aren't functioning, they become numb to the world, tired, moody, no ambition, rough skin and creepy dark eyes. They stop seeing friends or going out, etc., all due to constant urges and hormone crashes. So they fap more to feel better.

Some guys, like a couple on this thread, now are not able to get hard with a real girl because they can't match the porn. This is PIED, or porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Then that's embarrassing and leads to depression and more porn for relief.

So you go on nofap. Here you are. Here's what happens in the first 7-12 days. Since you're not looking at porn and not orgasming, the body/brain goes into dopamine withdrawal. The body is desperate so the urges become very bad as the brain tries every trick in the book, including causing your testosterone to surge so you get incredibly horny, nearly constant boners and very sensitive penis. It craves it so badly. That is why the first week is so hard. You can only do it with willpower if you can understand why the cravings are so bad. Scientists think that dopamine is possibly 100 times more addictive than cocaine and you've been overdosing on it for years. Good news, though. If you make it past those cravings, they will ease up at some point.

So don't try this by yourself, guys, especially you younger ones. The triggers are everywhere you turn. You have to hide your phone, install porn blockers, delete instagram. Don't worry if it offends that girl. Obviously, she has a problem too, that makes her think she had to shame herself to get guys to notice her. If she only understood that those pics were part of the guy's problem in the first place. Get over your addiction and you will see girls in a whole new light and they will see a new you.

You make it through these cravings for just a few days, you can enter the gate to the next level. But watch out. Weeks 2 and 3 are really tough for completely different reasons. Cravings will be the least of your problems.

 

Now that's how to look at relapses.

 

@Single Change Palm

Great update. You are not focused on the failures. You're focused on the victories and you finally laid out what you don't like about yourself, which is what leads to any harmful behavior in the first place. Everyone on this thread should write a post like this at some point. I dare you all!